Steorn's perpetual motion claims are extraordinary. They've raised millions from investors, and 2007 is the year that this will all change the world or Steorn will fall apart. Which will it be? Find out here first.

Thursday, July 5, 2007

One of our readers was able to get this photo of the lab where Steorn is working on the device:

"Attached are 2 pictures of the upstairs of Kinetica-Museum which Steorn are using as a temporary workshop. You can see a perspex disc, blu tack, a drill, a hammer and a hack saw. Over unity it would seem does not seem to require more than a few basic household tools! Though those hot lights clear play havoc with the blu tack!!!"

He was also able to speak with a Steorn employee:

You can also see pictures of the red jacketed Steorn employee I vented my spleen at around 10.00am, telling him that I had never in my 20 years in technology sales and marketing seen such an incredible display of incompetence. He had no answer to the most obvious of questions. He presented himself as a spokesman for Steorn....Most tellingly he admitted before 4 witnesses that there was no load bearing Orbo device inside the Kinetica museum. No weights being lifted by any device. Just a spinning Orbo (still requiring fixing) . He explicitly said that "the load bearing device is back in Dublin".

Richard Walshe confirmed to me that the prototype Orbo would have no load attached. He claimed that when functioning correctly we would see the entire assembly apparently rotate as if powered by nothing.

Although I am a skeptic, there is an underlying thought (or wish) for this to be true. Although all their unprofessional behavior is making me think this is a scam. For what purpose exactly i dont know. But there is still alot to be learnt about magnetic fields and maybe there is something to it.

They say its just a spinning wheel. If its just that i dont see how it can generate enough energy to power anything. If they hooked it up to a light bulb, then i would be impressed and a believer. A spinning wheel sounds just like a flywheel which is nothing new.

I'm guessing that they should be able to get it spinning at some point in the next few days. They presumably had some intention of showing something – I’m not sure how looking like chumps could fit into any kind of plan.

The fact that (it seems) a slight thermal expansion has brought things to a standstill doesn't exactly advertise that they have lots of power to spare.Spinning a very light load, like a thin plastic wheel on a very good bearing, takes very little power. Carefully built, you might even get away with a Crookes radiometer style power source or a thermal, ‘drinking bird’, type effect. Ambient light/heat could power such a thing indefinitely. Building it would take some nice precision engineering and it would be very sensitive to it’s environment...

1. The device Steorn are showing is just about the least likely thing to persuade skeptics. Ok, the transparency thing is neat, but not at the cost of power output. To demonstrate OU, which is the whole point, it needs to do some real work. They don't seem to have a concept of what they need to demonstrate, and have not listened to skeptics. Why not have one transparent device, and others doing work?

2. Lame excuses. There doesn't seem to be much lighting there, some spots. Surely they could at least show it running with the lights off?

3. Very poor management/engineering! Bringing one device, breaking it, unable to fix it. This doesn't give the impression of a competent engineering company.

The story that they were trying to improve the efficiency of a wind turbine was never very convincing. The sort of work they do is more systems oriented, I would expect them to buy in components rather than starting playing around with stuff outside their experience.

Enginerd:snip/Based on the requests that Seamus made to the SPDC members, it would not suprise me if steorn has asked DrMike (completely outside his NDA) to delay significant reporting until some particular time or event.

snip/

Now I see why the rabid faithful have not been commenting. Gag request.

Dr Mike did check in, and said to "enjoy the speculation". Maybe he is gagged.

I would guess that Steorn is feeding the SPDC info, but Grimer has been pretty active in the regular forum, so perhaps not. Maybe it's taken Sean a while to "inform" the SPDC. We'll see if E8 and 007 show up soon.

About Mike: He's fine, he wrote a message in the Sv message string on the Steorn Forum:

" * drmike * CommentTime2 hours ago

Wish I could help actually. It took me a while to find Kinetica - it's in the middle of a construction zone. Got to talk to several people and do the same kind of conjecturing everyone here is doing. I'm stealing internet access from somebody, so this is cool, I will try to see if the feed works thru this network. ... Enjoy the speculation.

I finally got a link that works! I can see the cameras now.But I bet that as soon as the person shuts off their computer I'm screwed....

That message suggests he can't say anything meaningful at this time. I leave you to guess why.

Meanwhile this whole story is following the script written by convicted con man Carl Tilley a few years back though his was a lot more fun because it involved an electrically propelled DeLorean car.

Tilley's web site is down but you can see the original preserved in the Internet's Wayback Machine. Use this link. You have to wait quite a while for the photos to load but they will (5-10 minutes for me). The bandwidth is limited.

Other than that, I agree with what everyone else has said here so far. Regardless of the merits of the discovery, the level of incompetence shown is truly impressive. No backup device. No backup plans. No video of a working machine. Huge windup and no delivery. Wonderful.

"McCarthy said it was functioning perfectly until yesterday when it froze suddenly."

So the geniuses who are about to revolutionize the world's energy sources and overturn much of modern physics didn't understand the concept of "backups"?

It sure makes one wonder what else they don't understand.

BTW, I am sure Mike is fine and for whatever reason can't talk yet. I am going to guess that as soon as he can, he will. In spades.

What is it he says? Patience, persistence and truth? Or some such?

Oh-- an addendum to my link to the Tilley web sites archive: you can click on the images and get a larger image. It's amazing how elaborate Tilley's con was. It went on almost three years and before he fled the state to avoid prosecution, he made quite a bit of money. He even rented a major speedway and managed to fool the legendary race car driver Bobby Allison -- for a while anyway.

That whole story is highly instructive and illustrative if you can take the time to view it. And of note, Tilley's first failure to sustain a run of his "fuelless car" was excused by a wheel bearing problem.

Sorry-- something else I just noticed. In the image (jpg) of the video stream on this site, the lights are visible up near the ceiling. They are a long ways from the display. It's hard to believe that from that distance, they can create "intense heat". London weather, per web, is high 62 degrees F, low 55 with clouds and rain. Hardly conducive to an overheat.

So while Steorn may not know Tilley's script of disingenuous lying and equivocation, they do seem to be following it.

If anyone is interested, here is an employee that helped raise funds for Tilley's "free energy" company and later blew the whistle on him when he stumbled on inconsistencies. It shows how easy employees can be duped. Read his story on how he came to find out his company was a scam.

everyone trying to draw conclusions here is just sort of looking like jackasses. all we can see is a room with a wheel in it. i don't see the orbo there at all. and why the eff would they leave the lighting intact if it was causing problms? you don't think that was the first thing they'd try? all this windup, and nothing -- exactly. they meant to show something. wait and see and then we'll know.

You know, looking at the photos of the "device" it looks almost exactly like a perpetual motion device I designed when I was TEN.

I must have been a freaking genius and not realized it. To think if I had only built it. The device they're showing is a little too simplistic for no one else to have stumbled upon it before.

While you may argue that they wouldn't have willingly sabotaged their own demo, I'd beg to differ. The mere "idea" that the lighting could stop an over unity device is preposterous. Especially since they don't seem to have a backup on hand.

If this entire spectacle ends without them demonstrating the device due to unforeseen issues (which will undoubtedly be fixed in the immediate future), there's no doubt that this is 100% scam.

It's interesting to note that in the Tilley whitleblower article, that the employee said several experts on the car breakdown issue came forward in the audience that fateful day to give him parts and help fix the bearing problem. He refused their help and cancelled the demo.

Since the cameras and lights don't play an important role in the demo, it will be intersting to see if they will be willing to remove them and get on with the demo, or follow in the footsteps of Tilley and cancel the event because of a convenient problem.

"everyone trying to draw conclusions here is just sort of looking like jackasses."

I'm not drawing any conclusions. I have my suspicions and opinions but after following this (whatever it is) for nearly a year, some patterns of Steorn behaviour have become apparent to me and there is much more to raise doubt about Steorn than the latest botched demo.

I am willing to wait and see but in the meantime I am going to point out any inconsistencies, half-truths, lies, deceptions, broken promises, missed deadlines.........

The problem is that there may never be a punch line to Steorn. They may just fade to black and there will be no conclusions to draw.

As for the lighting being taken down, that’s why I asked if anyone had photos.

The point of the demo here was to have something on display 24 hours a day for several days. The display was to be visible from a variety of angles through several webcams, even when the museum was closed.

Suddenly, the thing cannot work in "light". So what we will get is something that seems to work just fine during opening hours that you can see with the ambient light. Once the museum closes, however, you won't be able to see it until the next day.

This "orbo doesn't work in lights" BS was a clear ploy to ensure that people could not view their silly little toy 24 hours a day. That will allow Steorn to get back into the museum and wind it back up, recharge it, or do whatever is necessary to ensure it will work the next day.

This has turned out to be much, much more than the mouth of Sauron Sean M. anticipated. He consistently said it was "no big deal", nothing too exciting, not significant, etc before the demo. How wrong he was! This has the skeptics screaming for blood and the deluded, credulous believers scurrying for the hole in the wall.

Paging E8, 007, Gaby, and Babcat; you have an appointment with reality.

"Since the cameras and lights don't play an important role in the demo, it will be intersting to see if they will be willing to remove them and get on with the demo"

Exactly. Or, as someone else noted, modern video cameras work fine in reduced light, in ambient light especially when set for monochrome, and even in "nightshot" (green) mode where they use ambient infra-red as the sole illumination. Nobody cares what color Orbo is, do they?

Lighting issues alone can NOT prevent this demo from working. No eff'n way!

If the lights on the ceiling are the problem then you better dont step in that room or you will be vaporized....

Im getting tired of all these "mishappenings" offcourse someone can stumble against some unforseen problems but at steorn it looks like their company slogan.. I would really like to believe them but why is it that at demos suddenly the device freezes

Looking at it sympathetically - it sounds like they've tried to make a jazzy, sexy version of the device out of just a few bits of perspex. Subsequently this much more slight version suffers from thermal expansion in a way that a 'proper' Orbo would not.

Grimer: I'm a Spud and I've been commenting without objection from the mods. I think that lack of comments from the Spuds may be because they fear they've been led up the garden path and jilted at the altar with a bun in the oven. :shamed:

LOL....you have to watch this video of James Randi destroying this con man. The BEST part is that this guy claims he could not do his magical powers because the lights were too hot!!! Just like ORBO. This is too funny!!!

Ahhh yes! Performance art at it's finest! They are now going into the "how long we can string them along" phase, next phase = "do the believers still believe even after we give them nothing?" (I can tell you that answer will be a resounding YES). Steorn is a marketing company, they've been bankrolled by someone to do this. It's Performance Art/Viral Marketing all wrapped up with a bow on top. In two more days all cameras will be trained onto a product within the glass case, possibly an xbox game or new mobile phone (Helio Orbo Smartphone perhaps) etc.

I've just spoken with some people with Steorn and they've finally figured out what's really causing the problems. It's not the heat from the lighting that's the problem, it's global warming! Al Gore, add this to the list.

I assume that the device shown in Cam1 is the housing for the disc wheel shown in the "toolshed" pic?

The slots in the housing are perhaps for mounting magnets. The disc has a spindle with presumably the faulty bearing. It does seem amazing that with the resources of the capital at their doorstep they can't find a way to fix it. Or just fly over something from Dublin...

You know what I want to see, I want to see PROOF that the work does not come out of the magnet.

Okay lets say what we have right now is a genuine goof-up and the machine really does work, and will be operating by tomorrow or whenever. Like someone else here said their wristwatch ran just fine, doing next to no work, for 5 years straight now, poof, there that means it's a PPM! Well no because it consumes a very slight amount of energy doing next-to-no work from a tiny built-in battery.

The Orbo machine won't work without the magnet. Therefore, I suspect it is the magnet that supplies the energy (that is, assuming that the thing works at all).

So what I want to see is a demo machine that can produce, say, a MegaJoule without wearing out the magnet. That's a lot of energy. It would have to lift up a 1 kg weight 10 cm a million times over, and still be crankin'. I doubt a magnet has a MJ of energy in it; if it did THAT MUCH WORK then I'd be satisfied, yes, they are truly suckin' in entropy somehow or other.

If this demo works (and I suspect that yes it will eventually) okay; fine. But it still does not ~prove~ that the energy is not being derived from the magnets; but it does prove that a pure magnet reciprocating machine is possible, which is remarkable by itself; but not quite the "full Monty".

"It does seem amazing that with the resources of the capital at their doorstep they can't find a way to fix it. Or just fly over something from Dublin..."

It's not only amazing, it demonstrates either tremendous negligence and incompetence or gross fraud. I guess they get to choose which it is.

"While we wait, some more topical humor Are you a quack? "

That's an instructive web site. They mention "numbers". Why hasn't Steorn, after all this time, released specifics of force, power, energy and more beyond their vague and presumably theoretical 0.5 w/cc figures? I mean, are they doing anything other to earn their salaries than giving bad lectures, doing boring interviews and censoring forums? Aren't they doing experiments? Where are the results? One can give out clear unambiguous test results and system specifications without revealing trade secrets but Steorn has never done that. Being vague, tangential and defensive has been their usual operating mode which is in itself cause for suspicion.

And then there are all the other good questions others asked such as how it's possible that university scientists would be shown an overunity device, agree that it is valid, and refuse to be witnesses for it. Steorn claims that this happened. But of course they won't name names or produce interviews. How suspicious should that have been long ago?

The whole thing smells increasingly of very stale fish.

Like someone else said, I feel sorry for Kinetica. I'd feel sorry for the investors too but that's tempered by my belief in "caveat emptor". They should have known better and proceeded differently.

Ok folks, just got some inside scoop.. Kinetica are 110% PISSED!! They have given Steorn till mid day tomorrow or are pulling the plug, "legal action" was another word heard thrown about repeatedly. In a nutshell they feel the integrity of their gallery has been severely damaged by Steorn. So, this is not looking good. I assume the believers are in TOTAL shock and hanging by a thread. What a debacle.

It appears that Dr. Mike has posted perhaps the single greatest cliffhanger ever to appear in the Steorn Forum. To summarize, he said hang tight, we're living through a moment in history regardless of how it all turns out. Can that be anymore nail-biting? I would pay a goodly sum right now for Dr. Mike's phone number and a private convesation.

In other news, not a peep, not even a squeek, out of any of the rabid believers on the forum. They have gone absolutely silent. All I see there are people complaining about Steorn screw-up and skeptics snickering up their sleeves. I just can't believe that any publicity is good publicity; this is a bad deal for Steorn. Redemption will be hard fought.

In a very similar vein (to the notion that Steorn must have been serious and "had something" to get this far) I doubt that Kinetica would have considered hosting the presentation unless they had seen the working prototype up-front.

No, I think odds are that it's just a genuine goof-up that they are working through. What does Kinetica care anyway, they're just the host, they get a zillion hits on their web page and priceless exposure in the media (well, a little bit anyway). They didn't invent the machine, it doesn't really reflect on them on way or the other; they'd look pretty stupid if they throw out Steorn who subsequently gets it working at some other venue.

I guess I'll believe it when I see it, same as for everything involved here.

Reading yet even more over at the Steorn forums, one thing is becoming apparent. The focus is shifting away from Steorn and towards Dr. Mike. Our good Doctor is becoming the super-star celebrity of the day! Good for you Dr. Mike, just wish you would throw out some more hints. I am patient though, I'm happy to wait till you get back to the States for a full debrief.

Its simple, like steorn says. The resemblance to perendev is just too much. The rotor (in the 'lab' pics posted here) has four tiny magnets equally spaced. The stator has slanted slots to hold the magnets.

Guess, the constant heat from the lights bent the plastic and threw the rotor out of alignment. In perendev motor, the angle and alignment is everything. (note that no one knows for sure if the original perendev motor works. The videos from perendev does show huge machines spinning on their own though)

So, is this a "me too" attempt by steorn? A mimicry of perendev's scam? Or they stumbled upon the real trick for making perendev work ? We will see....

I would love to believe this is real but my background forces me to believe it is not.

If the wheel turns continuously even without lifting an apparent load it is still running over-unity because it is expending power to overcome bearing and air friction. We need to make sure the wheel is not receiving power from external sources such as what is seen from a radiometer http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crookes_radiometer

If the output is very low and for some reason is difficult to scale upwards it may be feasible to scale it downwards where millions of tiny generators could be fabricated similar to a semiconductor process where the total output of the group could do something useful.

Then again, if somehow the found a bizzare property where they could use "perminent magnets to create a time varying magnet field" it may be possible to periodically apply pressure to a diamagnetic material conected to a rotor. But the time varying aspect is the imposible part. It can be done with heat, but it ends up killing the magnet. (Geesh I sound as nutty as Steorn)

"Steorn is a marketing company, they've been bankrolled by someone to do this."

Well they'd better make something work, cause if they don't they might as well cancel the return flights to Dublin - I'd give them 10 minutes at most in a Dublin pub, and I'm not talking about duped investors. :)

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